One of the newer suggestions for the design of public economic units refers to Functional Overlapping Competing Jurisdictions (FOCJs), which are instruments to shape cooperation of jurisdictions, e.g. municipalities.The study clarifies important types of FOCJ. It concentrates on FOCJs where the...

This paper surveys the theoretical literature on the effect of soft budget constraints on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of soft budget constraints in general. It focuses on the conception of the soft budget constraint syndrome as a...

This paper investigates efficiency losses caused by independent tax systems and proposes ways of remedying this coordination failure Whereas the harmful effects of tariff competition have been thoroughly explored in the trade policy literature little is known about the externalities that result...

This peper anlyzes the impact of tax competition between two countries of un- equal per-capita capital endownments on tax rates and efficiency when distorting wage, residence-based and source-based capital taxes (or any combination of two instruments) are available for governments. The national...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a country consisting of a large number of heterogeneous regions, each comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighbouring district,...

This paper studies the provision of public inputs in a federal system. A vertical tax externality is also considered in a simple general equilibrium model used to analyze the efficiency of equilibria under different scenarios. The results show that the state provision of public inputs may affect...

The multinationalization of corporate investment in recent years has given rise to a number of international tax avoidance schemes that may be eroding tax revenues in industrialized countries, but which may also reduce tax burdens on mobile capital and so facilitate investment. Both the welfare...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a region comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighboring district, there is underprovision of public goods in both the city and...